Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I remind members to have their mobile telephones switched off and also that a vote on a Bill is due to take place. I formally welcome the new European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Dr. Vytenis Andriukaitis. He is very welcome and I extend to him a ceád míle fáilte. I also welcome his officials who have accompanied him this morning. We are extremely privileged that he has chosen to visit us today. We know he had a number of meetings before this meeting and he will have more afterwards. We hope he has a very productive series of meetings.

We are pleased that he sought a meeting with the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children. It is important that the European Union institutions reach out and connect with committees in parliaments, in particular this committee which has been a very proactive committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas. I like to think that this committee has worked on a cross-party basis and in a non-confrontational and non-adversarial way to promote public health. We have achieved good success in many policy areas which the Commissioner will hear about later. We are very pleased that the Commissioner has a very distinguished background in the area of health, both as a policy-maker and a medical practitioner. We will learn a lot from this engagement with him and I commend him on his work as a policy-maker and as a medical practitioner.

This meeting is a very important opportunity for the committee. We look forward to hearing his priorities for his term as Commissioner. In return, we look forward to highlighting to him some areas that are of concern to us and what we have worked on as a health committee. I thank the committee secretariat and EU policy clerk for organising the meeting and for their help and assistance. With that, I welcome the Commissioner formally to the meeting and ask him to make his opening remarks.